WHAT IS THE STAGES MARTIX AND HOW IS IT USEFUL AS A TOOL FOR PSYCHOTHERAPISTS & COACHES?

Terri O’Fallon Introduces the Three Questions

The STAGES Matrix looks like a complex model, but it has only three questions. You can really get to the developmental level of any person by getting very good at asking these three questions.

Question 1: Is the object of awareness Concrete, Subtle or MetAware?

Question 2: Is the experience Individual or Collective?

Question 3: Is the experience Receptive, Active, Reciprocal, or Interpenetrative?

As the three questions intersect with each other in various combination a set of repeating patterns reveal themselves from the first tier octave to the second tier octave to the third tier octave. When answered, they point to one’s developmental level in the moment.

These questions are used to unveil each of 12 stages of human development within these three tiers. This allows us to work with the richest possible experience: intellectually, interactively, phenomenologically, and experientially.

TERRI: We have 12 person perspectives that we are working with here. The intersection of the three questions and the different person perspectives have different kinds of processes, which allow us to zero in very carefully on any particular part of a person, which will allow us to become very effective and very efficient at noting the part of a person that might need some support or help if you’re doing psychotherapy or coaching.

You can see that there are 36 kinds of views that you can take on somebody that you’re working depending upon which question you’re working with or which person perspective you’re working with or which tier you’re working with.

KIM: I’ve been doing psychotherapy and coaching for nearly 30 years now and I’ve used various developmental models. When Terri showed me this model, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The whole world opened up to me and I fell in love with it immediately. I have found, over the course of using this model, that I’m much more effective and efficient with my clients.

As I drill into this model further, I see a precision that can be used that I have not discovered in any other model. That’s why I love this model so much, not only for helping clients, but for my own personal growth. It’s just so beautiful and precise and clear. One of the things you can do with this is not only drill into each developmental level, which you can do with pretty much any developmental model, but you can drill into the specifics of a developmental level based upon the parameters. Each developmental level has these three parameters and they have three different characteristics to them at every developmental level.

By understanding these different parameters, you can really get the shape of consciousness of any human being that’s sitting in front of you, including yourself.

It really helps us to be able to become more intimate with our friends, our lover, our neighbor. We can really understand where they’re coming from. It helps to resolve issues more clearly and quickly.

It’s kind of like the DNA of consciousness. You can watch the parameters clicking on and off, shaping consciousness in different ways as you get to understand these parameters and how they interact with each other. It really helps us to be able to become more intimate with our friends, our lover, our neighbor. We can really understand where they’re coming from. It helps to resolve issues more clearly and quickly. People that we might be frustrated with or upset with, we can understand them in a much more beautiful way, so it helps us resolve that for ourselves.

KIM: I love the precision that I can use, as a psychotherapist and a coach, to drill into the specific underlying parameter that’s creating the issue for the client.

What I mean by that is, a lot of times we can get lost in the story the client is telling us, but instead of getting lost in the story, we can hold the story and understand the underlying field, the underlying matrix, the underlying parameters that are making this story the client tells us so important, so frustrating, or so alive for them.

By understanding that, you can understand what small, precise, little interventions you can do to tweak it that will help them heal, grow even more broadly into their wonder, and move to later developmental levels or move to more breadth or drop into shadow and heal, minute little changes you can do that will help the shadows heal. It’s just a glorious experience to be able to use a model that works so precisely and cleanly and crisply as this one does.

One of the things that I really love is not only the shadow and the breadth, but the existential, the leading edge issues, the transformational issues. A lot of times, these transformations can be really tough for people, but one of the things I have discovered is by utilizing the STAGES model, you can make the transition more smooth and much more easy.

I love watching the awe, wonder, and delight that comes when the conscious mind moves into a whole new space, a whole new pattern of consciousness, a whole new level that just opens up the world field to them in a much more broad way and how it just feels so fulfilling and rich for them.

It’s just a glorious experience to be able to use a model that works so precisely and cleanly and crisply as this one does.

To be able to allow those transitions to operate smoothly, it’s beautiful to watch. It’s one of my favorite things, as well as the wonder that occurs when somebody heals a shadow, something that they may have been struggling with for 20-30 years. All of a sudden, it doesn’t take that much of an intervention and the shadow drops away and the pain and suffering drops away.

That’s what I love about the model, the ability to come in and hone in like the precision of a scalpel, rather than using a shotgun approach. Here, this is a whole developmental level that we’re going to address. We can just drop in and move really precisely with this model and I love that.”

We are thrilled to be collaborating with Lower Lights School of Wisdom for an upcoming four part retreat in beautiful Scholls, Oregon that starts in May 2019. SPECTRA: A 9-Month Journey of Transformationis an experiential training program that deeply engages consciousness, personal and collective evolution, and service to the world. The curriculum draws from ancient Wisdom traditions, cutting edge psychological science and transformational group processes.Learn More

A COMMUNITY THAT CHALLENGES & SUPPORTS

Whether you are a committed meditator, social justice activist, soul reaching beyond the borders of traditional religions, an audacious entrepreneur, or simply a profoundly curious being, we are committed to help you dive deeper, reach broader and ascend higher in this journey of becoming. We are here to challenge you, guide you, and lend a helping hand in a community of peers. We are committed to supporting you to more fully realize the endless possibilities of a precious human birth. Learn More

Do you feel called to live life from a deeper, more authentic place?

Would you like to be a part of a community that both challenges and supports you, all in service of your evolutionary growth

Do you seek a path that honors the gifts of your tradition (or non-tradition) while being open to all truth?

Are you eager to engage trusted guides, mentors and elders who have walked the path of waking up and growing up?

SPECTRA Program Faculty

STAGES International partner, researcher, teacher, coach, and spiritual director Terri O’Fallon PhD.Kim Barta who specializes in sacred secular experiential training, advanced consciousness coaching and facilitating the natural unfolding of human development.Founder of Lower Lights School of Wisdom, Thomas McConkie who has studied broadly across the traditions: from Hindu mantra meditation, Zen and Vipassana in the Buddhist Wisdom stream, to the school of Integral, Developmental Psychology, and his native tradition, Mormonism.John Kessler is a social activist who leads the Salt Lake/Global Civil Network which does integrally informed social and political transformation work locally and networks globally.

Do you seek to deepen your capacity for meditative awareness and presence in the world?

All collectives, including families, corporations, and businesses of all kinds have issues that need to be faced. Usually the way we work with this is to take a shotgun approach—that is, we try the intervention that seems most likely to work given our experience and understanding of the concern. However, there is a much more effective and efficient way to approach any troubling process that we encounter in our collectives.

All collectives have a center of gravity world view. This means that collectives have a structure that is built on a particular belief system, and this is concretized in the mission statement, the policies and procedures and norms of the organization, and the kind of systems that they use to organize their work together.

For example, a common belief system is what we call a 3.5 /Modern/Achiever perspective. The predominant basis of this kind of collective is looking to the future, with a creative imagination of what that future can hold for the collective. Goals and outcomes are set by a CEO with input from others, and a plan is put into place with timelines and data points and benchmarks along the way to achieve the goals of the organization. The organization has a hierarchical structure with the CEO at the top and a series of managers (of managers of managers, etc.) who supervise the part of the organization they are responsible for and who organize their areas to support the goal orientation and the outcomes of the organization as a whole.

Another belief system is the 4.0 Post-modern/Pluralist belief system. An organization that is formed around this belief will be relatively flat, because the 4.0 belief system doesn’t include much hierarchy—everyone has a voice. Leaders may set a direction for the organization without a lot of specificity and steer the organization in the moment based on what comes up, being very responsive to the complex adaptation that may be needed.

Regardless of the belief system that an organization is based upon, any and all collectives run into struggles of some type. These struggles (issues) are also organized around a belief system. It is very helpful to know the belief system that these issues are organized around. There are three kinds of issues.

An existential, or leading-edge issue. The organization or collective may be growing into a later level belief system. For example, a 3.5 Modern collective may begin pressing into the working with more complex adaptive systems (a 4.0 Post-Modern, Pluralist complex adaptive systems belief) while it is organized structurally around a 3.5 Modernist system. This can cause quite a bit of confusion! If you handle this from a breadth issue of 3.5, you will not solve the problem. The solution lies in moving the 3.5 culture to a 4.0 culture.

There may be issues around robustness and breadth—that is, everyone is working well together at a 3.5 Modernist level, but some of, or the whole of the organization is missing some critical skills that will keep it intact. This often has to do with technological advances, and we see businesses lose their cutting edge because they aren’t on the cutting edge of the next level of technological skills. Their organizational belief structure may be the same, but they may have an issue of not being able to reformat their business related to these new discoveries. For example, the business of processing films into pictures (slides, negatives, etc.) has all but gone by the wayside because of the technologies of cameras on cell phones and immediate access to photos online. Failing to build skills around the new technology can cause problems in the business as a whole. Not all breadth issues are large. There are many smaller issues that fit in this category that may not be noticed. Even though failing to notice them won’t put you out of business, the effect of these kinds of issues are real and have an effect. These effects will materialize even if you remain faithful to your 3.5 mission, values, and structural beliefs organizationally. The solution does not require a new structure at 4.0 to adapt, but it does require you to utilize your 3.5 structure in a new, expanded way.

The third area is related to the darker issues in a collective. Regardless of whether the structure you have is at the 3.5 Modern level or the 4.0 Post-modern level, these issues relate to the underlying hidden beliefs that cause harm in part of or all of the collective. For example, there may be a very negative story about the organization that the employees believe and impart into any new employee that comes into the organization. “We have a bad reputation here.” “The powers that be don’t care about us.” “This is not a good place to work.” If these rumors are true it is imperative that they are cleared up if an effective, efficient organization is to flourish. This is a positive thing. However, it is not uncommon for these kinds of beliefs about the collective to remain even if everything has been improved. Perhaps changes have been made, but the past, negative, belief systems and stories within the organization haven’t changed. This kind of issue is a ‘shadow’ issue and usually falls into the category of negative gossip which can be handed from participant to participant. The negative gossip issue often comes from an earlier developmental level (2.5 Traditional belief system). This requires us to go back into the history of our collective culture and address it overtly and create a new story of healing and robustness.

When an issue arises in your collective/business/organization, it can be very helpful to look to see what kind of issue has arisen. Each level of issue demands an entirely different intervention. If you apply the wrong type of intervention to the issue (i.e. a leading-edge issue when the issue is a breadth or robust issue) the intervention can actually make the problem worse and create a new unnecessary issue that you will have to contend with in addition to the original one you are trying to solve.

Listen to Terri and Kim as they talk with Maureen Metcalf about the developmental levels of collectives.

First, as you’ll notice, we have changed our name from Developmental Life Design to STAGES International. We’re expanding our services and this new name better reflects our service offerings. It also better reflects the central role that the STAGES Model plays in all of these services.

As many of you know, Terri co-founded Pacific Integral with Geoff Fitch in 2004. She is on the faculty and the STAGES scoring series has been housed under Pacific Integral. Effective January 1, all of Pacific Integral’s STAGES related programs, including trainings, scoring and debriefing have been transferred to STAGES international so that all STAGES offerings can be integrated under one roof. Pacific Integral will continue to offer its highly regarded Generating Transformative Change (GTC) program and Terri will continue as faculty in that program, but she will otherwise phase out of her partner role in Pacific Integral to concentrate on STAGES International’s programs.

Terri and Geoff continue to be friends and joyfully collaborate and participate in each other’s work. They are building on their past experience and rich history together and setting the stage for a more effective and efficient structure for the future growth of both the STAGES programs and the GTC offering. Both STAGES and the GTC program have developed a rich body of work and each has some unique needs for their future evolution. Each body of work will have a clear home that is optimized to supports its development:

Pacific Integral: (led by Geoff Fitch)

Transformative change and growth – GTC

Causal leadership

Organizational growth

Individual development and mentoring

GTC Graduate community

STAGES International: (led by Terri and Kim)

STAGES Assessments

STAGES training (in-person workshops and online courses):

STAGES Theory

Professional development

Certification for therapists and coaches

Personal development

Scoring and debriefing training for STAGES Assessments

Save $50-100 on a STAGES Assessment in January

Many of you have heard about STAGES Assessment, a process that identifies your core stage of perspective development within the STAGES model. For the month of January, we are reducing the price of an assessment and debrief by $100, and an assessment only by $50. If you’ve been curious about how the STAGES model applies to YOU, this is a good opportunity to find out through a process that’s backed by seven years of rigorous research. Please visit the STAGES Assessment page for more information.

We also want to let you know that the website of the Developmental Research Institute, a non-profit institute led by Terri and John Kesler, will be going live early in the new year. DRI holds and supports continued research on the STAGES model. Watch for this in a new announcement.

We are excited about these changes and their potential to enhance STAGES research, training and practical applications. We invite you to visit our updated website and share it with friends and colleagues.

Strange as it may seem, the building blocks of shadow are the same exact building blocks of spirit. The only difference is how we use those building blocks. If we use them to understand the nature of reality more accurately, then we move to higher, stronger, broader, and more sustained levels of bliss. If we use them to distort reality then we dig ourselves into ever deeper, profound and entrenched levels of suffering. In this article I’ll cover four of these building blocks: Receptivity, Action/Mastery Reciprocity, and Integration/interpenetration.

We are introduced into shadow at an early age. Our parents do not, and cannot, understand reality perfectly. As a result, their distortions become what we are raised with. The sins of the parents will be passed on to the children. I never understood the meaning of this until I understood shadow. It’s a description of reality, not a punishment. This reality begins with our innocence. The innocence of the infant self is completely dependent upon the world in which we were born. This innocent self absorbs information like a sponge, and some of that which is absorbed is accurate, and some of it is distortions.

RECEPTION

We absorb because that is one of the building blocks of consciousness. We must be able to receive to perceive. Reception is thus the first building block of consciousness and we receive a great deal of vital information, both accurate and distorted, before we develop the next building block. As a result, introjection shadow material is the earliest shadow that can occur, and often this shadow is pre-verbal and pre-conscious memory. It requires special therapeutic skills to address.

MASTERY

The next form of shadow material arises from our next building block of Mastery. The capacity to take action with our consciousness allows us the power to discover, or to project. Projection becomes the next earliest form of shadow. This form of shadow becomes intrusive upon others and it leads to the terrible temper tantrums that accompany this stage of development. But mastery also allows us to take action to grow emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. We praise spiritual masters who have taken action successfully to raise their spiritual awareness. But mastery also allows us to be efficiently cruel, selfish. We can actively blow through others boundaries without concern, or break out into spontaneous delight.

RECIPROCITY

But as our self-centered action bumps up against the reality of the world a new building block of consciousness arises: Reciprocity. Reciprocity allows us to shift from self focus to collective focus. It allows us to have friends, and to be a true friend.

It also requires us to split our self into two people inside our own head. That is what second person perspective is… the ability to see our own side, and also see in our mind the other side too.

The two consciousnesses that exist in concrete reality, me and other, are matched inside our own consciousness. This allows for mutual intimacy, with self, other and the divine. It allows for communal ecstasy, but it also allows for self-denigration. This self-denigration can become so intense that it leads to internal strife. A battle begins to be waged inside our minds. This is splitting shadow or split ego-state dissonance. This dissonance can become so unbearable that we then resort to projection, our earlier shadow style, to relieve this suffering.

With this combination of splitting and projection we now have propagated the internal war onto the external world. The level of hostility we are exposed to as we navigate into second person perspective is related to how hostile we develop the internal ego stage relationship to unfold. So the external hostility we are exposed to by primary care givers (and others) is imprinted upon our internal ego-state relationship and then, if too intense, gets projected back out onto the world. If that hostility is shut down with even more hostility within the family, then the hostility gets symbolized and generalized outside of the family dynamic.

Thus prejudices of all kinds are born, (racism, sexism, classism, etc). And from them the injustices of the world rain down upon us. If there is love and understanding with clear limits, then we can construct within our minds a more congenial relationship and this will allow a different, more kind perception of the world. As we move into deeper understanding of the intimate relationships that are born out of the consciousness building block of reciprocity we can experience the wonder of seeing and knowing other and being seen and known by other. We can experience the Divine. We are not alone.

But some relationships may go well while others do not. Not only this, but the same relationship can go well and then dissolve into bitter problems. We can get lost in the dynamic of the relationship and therefore get bounced around by it.

INTEGRATION/INTEPENETRATION

This suffering leads us to have a part of our mind step outside of the relationship dynamic and see it from the outside. From here we can construct patterns to stand by that keep us stable, safe, and the relationships become more enduring. When we align ourselves with these patterns we construct another building block of consciousness, Integration or Interpenetration.

Interpenetration allows us to stay stable in the face of another person’s instability. This stability leads to better more stable relationships in our community, in ourselves, and with the divine. These four building blocks of consciousness will drive our development for the rest of our lives, for shadow or for spirit. There are many more building blocks of consciousness, and much more to learn about these four major ones. We invite you to explore all these building blocks that have been discovered and how to use them to help us to heal shadow, awaken sprit and help those suffering from distorted use of these building blocks of consciousness. STAGES makes it all clear as it unfolds the living map of life.

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